"He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
"He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
"He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
"He has excited domestic insurrections among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
"In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
"Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts, by their legislature, to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
"We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in general Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."
LIBERTY BELL.
It was almost two o'clock in the afternoon when the final decision was announced by Secretary Thomson, to the assembled Congress in Independence Hall. It was a moment of solemn interest; and when the secretary sat down, a deep silence pervaded that august assembly. Tradition says that it was first broken by Dr. Franklin, who remarked, "Gentlemen, we must now all hang together, or we shall surely hang separately." Thousands of anxious citizens had gathered in the streets of Philadelphia, for it was known that the final vote would be taken on that day. From the hour when Congress convened in the morning, the old bell-man had been in the steeple. He had placed a boy at the door below, to give him notice when the announcement should be made. As hour succeeded hour, the graybeard shook his head, and said, "They will never do it! they will never do it!" Suddenly a loud shout came up from below, and there stood the little blue-eyed boy clapping his hands, and shouting, "Ring! Ring!" Grasping the iron tongue of the old bell, backward and forward he hurled it a hundred times, its loud voice proclaiming "Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."[2] The excited multitude in the streets responded with loud acclamations, and with cannon peals, bonfires, and illuminations, the patriots held a glorious carnival that night in the quiet city of Penn.